I And I Am Jack
by The Hermione Granger Fan Club
Summary: Don't think this has been done before- Jack, X5-417, narrates this story about life and death in Manticore.


I am not top of the line, I know it.   
  
Our genetic codes are worth millions, our abilities and intelligence billions. But who would pay so much for me, X5-417?   
  
In private you can call me Jack. I like my name. Zack wanted it originally, but he would do anything for us. When I shyly put forward that I liked the name too, he let me have it and selected a name that rhymed. I think in time 'Zack' grew on him.   
  
We have faults, I know it. Max has a temper, Ben is too sensitive, Zane takes things too lightly. Jace is afraid, I know, afraid of lots of things, but she'd kill me if I ever said that. I'm kind of afraid of Jace, she's so fierce.   
  
But I have the most faults. They are the great ones and I'm not top of the line, like them.   
  
Jondy makes decisions too quickly; Iria makes them too slowly. Amna dotes on Omri and makes both of them weak. Splint is accident-prone and has allergies.   
  
Krit will never accept that he's wrong. Syl has an itchy trigger finger. Clay holds grudges. Tinga... Tinga is too tall, she's on eye level with Zack and fast catching up to Zane. Cloe bites her nails. Danny was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Roman always talks about being a great soldier, but when the opportunity arises he slinks into line and lets the other soldiers be the heroes.   
  
Zack is a daunting character- he has a lot of energy and not much of an outlet for it.   
  
Saul sulks. He used to have tantrums, but he spent a month in psy-ops and they cured him of that. Brin is afraid to die. Eva is gentle and trusting and brave, but I can tell she sometimes wants more recognition, to be the hero for once.   
  
And that's dangerous, because X5s work as one person, a unit.   
  
But they are perfect.   
  
And I'm Jack.   
  
When Tinga hits all the targets first off, she's a great soldier. When I hit them it's a fluke, it's bad... When Krit perfects his punch he's a credit to the unit. My punches are always hesitant.   
  
They are perfect.   
  
Jondy is stealth personified. Zane does brilliant imitations. Ben can tell stories and so can Tinga. Brin can run so fast she looks like a blur even to my eyes. Jace is always a good soldier, even more than Zack or Ben.   
  
Syl knows more about weapons than some of the teachers. Splint is fair, Splint is always fair. Saul picks up things like pain blocking techniques effortlessly. Cloe is brilliant with explosives of all kinds. Amna and Omri seem to read each other's minds. Clay is a brilliant mind when it comes to navigating.  
  
Zack is the CO and would do anything for us, especially Max.   
  
Iria always gets home in Escape and Evade- even that time she was blinded with the pain from fracturing both her knees and breaking her arm in two places. Danny could hold his breath longer than anyone. Eva... I can trust Eva with anything and I know she'll never ever tell.   
  
Roman means well. Zane and Krit call him a "... male Jace." because he wants to do well all of the time.   
  
And Max- Max can always slam me into the mat. That puts me in my place.   
  
I can't hold my breath as long as they can. I get seizures. I am not perfect.   
  
There's so much pressure to be perfect. Everyone else deals with the pressure... well, perfectly. They shrug off their faults like they don't matter.   
  
One day Ben's Nomalies are going to get me. I have nightmares 'bout them crashing through the walls, roaring, plaster spewing from the jagged cracks like smoke and dragging me away.   
  
I know they exist. Zack says they're stories but I don't see him spurning nighttime trips up to the High Place. Sometimes Max looks sort of sceptical during Ben's stories but when he tells the part about the bad soldiers... I look at her and her eyes are wide with fear.  
  
Amna hugs Omri and tells him not to be afraid, that only the bad soldiers are taken away. I imagine everyone looking at me.   
  
Ben and Eva look out for me. Ben sits by my bed in the night when I have seizures- he believes I have a direct link with the Blue Lady as it was my seizure that brought her to us. Eva always has a smile for me. When we listen to Ben's stories, we sit on the same cot together because Ben always gets the pride of place spot... so that everyone can see him, and everyone can hear him.   
  
We're going up to the High Place in a minute. Tinga and Brin stand together at the window, shivering slightly, rubbing at their eyes. I run a hand through the stubble of my hair and watch Ben get the younger ones out of their cots.   
  
"Maxie!" he says in her ear. "C'mon, it's time to go to the High Place."  
  
Incredibly, both Max and Jondy are asleep. Jondy grumbles abuse and pulls her thin pillow onto her head. Max's eyes flutter open and she climbs out of bed slowly. Zack supervises at the window- it's his turn to keep watch. The only person who never keeps watch is Ben.   
  
From blue eyes clouded in a perpetual glare Zack watches Max. His arms are folded as he silently watches her stretch and yawn and coax Jondy from her warm bed out into the cold.   
  
Brin and Tinga link arms in a learned, knowing way as if they know a secret the rest of us aren't entitled to. Jondy, sleepy-eyed, nudges Max and imitates Brin and Tinga. Tinga and Brin sniff and struggle not to surrender their honour by smiling at Jondy's silly antics, but Tinga's eyes are dancing and Brin yawns. Brin always yawns when she smiles to cover it up.   
  
Max initiates one of her and Jondy's special handshakes. All this secrecy and mystique the girls have. Makes me wonder if us boys are missing out on something.   
  
I sidle up to them as Zack goes to help Syl out the window. "Will you show me how to do that?" I beg them for about the millionth time.   
  
Jondy giggles like I'm joking and the two of them scramble, in perfect step, along to the window.   
  
And we're all up on the roof, standing around the picture of the Lady- the only grown-up I can remember who didn't want to push us to our limit, who didn't want to yell at us and break our bones and shine scary lights into our eyes or make us run all day and night through freezing snow until our feet are blue and bleeding. The Lady cares for us.   
  
"Has anyone lost a tooth?" asks Ben.   
  
"I have," calls Omri, and Amna beams at him as he volunteers a bloody tooth for the napkin, for the Lady's sacred appeal. A good thing about being an X5 is that we can regenerate teeth within a few days, so when the day comes that all of us have lost our baby teeth, we can simply continue to sacrifice them to the Lady through... other means.  
  
We start a soft chant. We don't really have much rhythm, but it passes. "We are the X5 group, protect us, ma'am, from the fearsome Nomalies. Make us strong."  
  
Jace hugs herself and scowls like always as Amna pulls off her own grey Manticore issue sweatshirt so that Omri can wear it. I give her a sympathetic look and Jace glares at me.   
  
Jace scares me sometimes.   
  
"Is there anything you want to ask the Lady for?" asks Ben after we're too cold to chant any more.   
  
Splint pulls out an offering of a strange colourful plastic cap that he found near the perimeter fence and places it on the napkin. "Blue Lady of Manticore, make me grow out of my food allergies," he pleads, and fades back into a sea of skinny bodies and bare feet and crew cuts.   
  
The corrugated iron creaks slightly as Eva steps forward. "Blue Lady of Manticore, help me learn how to use a rifle better."  
  
Krit and Syl step forward together and speak at the one time.   
  
"Blue Lady of Manticore, protect Syl," says Krit.   
  
"Blue Lady of Manticore, protect Krit," says Syl.   
  
They look at each other and laugh. Tinga shushes them gently.   
  
Iria pulls a nice feather from her pyjama pocket and puts it artistically onto the napkin so it borders the other offerings. "Blue Lady of Manticore, help me get home in Escape and Evade."  
  
Everyone rolls his or her eyes behind her back.   
  
Ben ends it, the tribute and sacrifices, and we slide down the drainpipe and climb into our beds. Jondy and Maxie slide into the one bed, huddled together for warmth. They giggle softly in the night, complaining about how cold and cramped it is to share a bed now that even the youngest of us are getting bigger, but they'll not leave each other as long as the stars are in the sky.   
  
I wake up many times during the night. Zack stands by the window as the light creeps through, the biggest brother, the strongest and greatest. Max and Jondy sit with arms around each other's shoulders on the headboard of the cot, at the foot of the bed, on the blanket, on the floor beside the cot. They have too much energy.   
  
And the sun rises, and we wake up, even if we've been awake all night like Jondy and Max. When the sun rises we lie silently in our beds and the soldiers come in, yelling at us to wake up. As far as they know, we've been asleep all night long.  
  
So does that mean everything we get up to at nights... the real 'us', what we are... does that mean it's all just a dream?  
  
There's breakfast, and I find myself a form in a blank-faced squadron as we go over our martial arts training.   
  
"Hi-YAAH!" we yell, stepping forward and chopping steady hands at thin air.   
  
"One, two, THREE!" bellows the teacher at the front of the room.   
  
We repeat, "One, two, THREE!" A fist flies out on every number.   
  
"Fall in!" barks the soldier, and we get into lines.   
  
I stare enviously at them, trying to stand like my sisters and brothers. Chest out, chin up, feet together. At ease. Like Zack, like Tinga, like Zane.   
  
Brin fights well. She's what I'd call a graceful fighter. She uses her fists like nothing I've ever seen- she ducks, hits out, kicks at her partner for sparring and it's beautiful, graceful.   
  
I'm thinking about this as it sets in, a familiar and horrible feeling.   
  
A sickening wave of nausea and pain radiates through me, reducing me to a weakened child rather than a soldier. My eyes rolls back and I crumple to the ground, twitching and convulsing in the grips of a seizure.   
  
I can't feel my legs sliding across the floor as I'm dragged from the room. What's happening to me? I've never had a seizure in front of the teachers.   
  
Why don't they do anything? I want to scream out to them, "HELP ME, SOMEBODY HELP ME!" My mouth won't form the words. Why won't they save me?  
  
And I see suddenly from Eva's anguished look the simple, unadultered truth. I am going to die.   
  
Everything goes black.   
  
Yet, I know I'm not dead as the silent forms of adults haul my body through the halls. I can't feel my body being hoisted onto a bed, or something being injected into my arm that makes me quiet and still and the pain numb... numb...  
  
Like the time when the night wasn't spent in Block Twelve, in our dormitory, but out in the forest under the stars. We waited, my team, mostly the skinnier ones and girls, led by Krit, or more accurately, Krit and Syl. We knew Jondy's team was fanning out across the valley, and before we could set off we needed to be sure of their position.   
  
So some scouts, Iria and Tinga and Omri, they were sent to ambush the enemy while we waited. It was snowing and tiny flakes of snow were settling in Eva's eyelashes and eyebrows as she crouched next to me, teeth chattering as our clothes got soaked through.   
  
"You look beautiful," I said to her suddenly, without really thinking about it.   
  
"I do?" she asked.  
  
Ben added, as he came back with Tinga leaning heavily on him, "Like the Lady."  
  
And Eva smiled at me and I had a mixture of feeling, a warmth in my heart and a pressure so cold it felt hot of Eva's arm around my shoulders and numbness all over.   
  
They say that when you're going to die you have your life flash before your eyes and this must be it, because I can remember that more clearly than ever before... other things, too. Like asking Zack if I could have my name, or Danny dying in the forest, or times when it didn't matter that I wasn't perfect like them.  
  
I can't feel anything as I receive more injections and I lose all sense of time, because I can't see. Although I know it must be sunset because a silent light is radiating across my face and receding toward what I think must be a window.   
  
The blackness recedes, finally, and I realise that someone is standing over me. A couple of people. There's Lydecker, the soldier from the classroom and a woman I haven't seen before. I lie motionlessly, barely breathing.   
  
"He looks so peaceful," says the woman softly. She has big brown eyes and wears glasses, and her greying hair is escaping from a tight bun.   
  
"He's not dead, though," says Lydecker in a steely voice. I think this might be the first time he's ever spoken about me, only me, not me and my sparring partner or me and my team... just me, to my face. "Alice, you do the honours."  
  
Tearfully, the woman steps forward holding a large syringe. "Hold still and relax, 417," she whispers. "This won't hurt a bit."  
  
I don't have much choice. I'm still helpless from previous shots. I feel the needle enter my arm...  
  
"Prep him for dissection when the drugs kick in, Alice," says Lydecker, and he walks away with the soldier as the woman Alice sits down on a chair next to me.   
  
"Poor little boy," she sighs, running a hand over my prickle of hair. "What have they done to you?"  
  
I want to tell her I'm not little, I'm big, I'm ten years old. But I know now that I'm right. I am going to die.   
  
I wonder why it doesn't upset me more. They killed me, after all. But I just feel so sad and weary and sleepy...  
  
"Just imagine you're falling asleep, 417. Oh God..." she murmurs.   
  
There's a familiar word- God. It's something yelled at me fairly a lot over the years.  
  
"God, 417, will you buck up?"  
  
"Suck it up, soldier! God, why did you have to be born this way?"  
  
"Only three minutes? God, 417, why aren't you like your unit? They can hold their breath four minutes!"  
  
And suddenly I can picture the faces of many people in my mind... Zack gazing at Maxie, Jace glaring at me, Tinga being the universal mother figure and looking after us all...  
  
My breathing's getting slower-  
  
Lydecker watching us from the doorway of the classroom, Jondy crouching beside me as we prepare to run down the mountainside, Iria's triumphant yell as she gets home yet again in Escape and Evade...  
  
The Alice lady is fading-  
  
Amna hugging Omri, Omri grinning at Amna, Syl and Krit finishing each other's sentences...  
  
It feels like my body is closing down one part at a time-  
  
Ben telling a Nomaly story, Danny bleeding from the mouth, Brin grunting as she hits out at an opponent...  
  
A blankness fills my mind, not the kind you get in class when you forget an answer, a bleaker, blacker kind-  
  
Cloe knawing at her nails, Splint falling down a flight of stairs, Clay pointing the path home, Max jumping catlike from the floor to her bed...  
  
I can't see any more, or even hear what the images in my mind are saying-  
  
Saul stubbornly folding his arms, Zane poking fun at Lydecker behind his back, various doctors and scientists snapping my arms and legs...  
  
And there's nothing but a single light far off that's fading even as I think-  
  
Even more people I've only ever seen in pictures, and Eva smiling through the pain of getting whacked in the teeth by a lucky punch on my part...  
  
So many people. Like me. I'm a person. I'm Jack. My favourite brother is Ben, and my favourite sister is Eva. I'm not perfect, which makes me more... human, I guess. It makes all of us more human...  
  
I can feel my body tensing slightly as everything shuts down. I'm afraid. I want to be on the field with my brothers and sisters, imperfect but still THERE. And the Alice lady places a shaking hand on my forehead as I slip away to a place I've never seen and will never return from...  
  
Goodbye, everyone. I'm gone, I'm Jack and I'm not perfect. But where I'm going, it isn't important whether you're perfect or not.   
  
* * *   
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Dark Angel' belongs to Fox and James Cameron. Not me. So don't sue. 


End file.
